Inappropriate Medicines

Take a look at this before you have that perscription filled.

Gantt Eli

A Drink A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

Maybe its a glass of wine or a beer, instead of an apple a day that keeps the doctor away, at least the heart doctor. This information from the University of Florida would seem to indicate as much.

Did Some One Say the 'C' Word?

Not that 'C' word. The 'C' word I'm talking about is 'Cholesterol'. Read what Karen De Coster has to to say about it and the mistaken efforts to reduce it.

Why Do Jews and Muslims Fight?

Every once in awhile I will get into a conversation with someone from “around here” and invariably the topic of conversation will drift on to the Middle East. We usually end up agreeing that “them folks” have been fighting since dirt was new and will be fighting right down to the end of time. The other day, I got to thinking about it and asked myself “why is that?” Well, I think that I have come up with the reason. This reason I’ve come up with is pretty simple, and you may ask yourself, why has no one thought of that before. Just remember, we often overlook the simple solutions because it just don’t seem right that seemingly complex problems can have simple solutions. One reason I think we have missed the solution is that we are always concentrating on the differences between Jews and Muslims. That is not were the problem is. The problem stems from something they have in common. They don’t eat pork. Yeah, that is all there is to it. They fight because they are mad as hell and they are made as hell cause they can’t eat pork. Of course they don’t know that is why they are mad, but it is. They are kind of like two cats eating peacefully side by side at a bowl of food. If you walk up and grab their tails and start mashing them, they will begin to squall and cry and pretty soon they will stop eating and begin fighting each other. Now they really are not mad at each other but they are mad so they lash out at the closet thing to them.

Some of you may question if not eating pork would be sufficient to cause people to kill each other. I think you are missing the point. It is not so much that not eating pork will make you want to be a suicide bomber as it is that eating pork will prevent you from wanting to kill. Anyone who has just walked out of Dreamland after eating a slab of ribs, a half a loaf of white bread and drinking a couple of Coca Colas or a big glass of sweet tea will tell you that the last thing on their mind is killing anyone. What they probably want more than any thing else is to take a long nap. Could it be that there is some hidden chemical in BBQ that soothes human beings?

Well that’s the answer to why they fight, so what is the solution to get them to stop? I don’t know. Both groups think that pork is unclean so you are not likely to get them to start eating it. If that soothing chemical exists, maybe some chemist can isolate it, produce it synthetically (no pork involved) and start putting it in the Middle East’s water supply. I’m afraid that until they do, the Jews and Muslims are still gonna continue to dispatch each other to the next life with gruesome efficiency.

Another Good Article On Global Warming

This article from Telegraph.co.uk contains some interesting information on global warming and climate change.

What to do about Alzheimer's Disease

This article by Bill Sardi points to resveratrol (red wine), folic acid, vitamin E, ginkgo biloba, carnitine or the Chinese herbal huperzine as all being better than existing perscription drugs.

David Letterman is Funny

I laughed my ass off at some of these.

We Believe What We Want To Believe

Warning! There is some fairly technical language in this article that will probably have you reaching for your dictionary or surfing the wikipedia. What the article seems to say is that when we are left to our own devices, we make up our minds about what we believe, gather information to support that belief and routinely dismiss information that contradicts our belief. In short, we believe what we want to believe.

Why do we do that? I think it might be because we all want to do what we want to do. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective, we have learned to do what is right. As my sister used to say, we are all born into innate depravity. As we grow up most of us are taught 'right from wrong'. When something comes along that we want to do, we feel we have to justify it in our minds. The hippies used to say, if it feels good do it. For most of us that doesn't work. We have to 'feel' that it is the right thing to do. So we gather the information that supports our belief, dismiss the nonsupportive information, believe what we want to believe and then do what we want to do.

Some times this works out OK, other times it brings disaster.

Why Are We Overweight?

Some of the answers in this article might surprise you.

US Going Bankrupt?

An article from the "Daily Telegraph" in the UK quoting "research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis" says that may be the case. The title of the article is 'US could be going bankrupt.' Could? After reading the article, I would say that the chances of the US going bankrupt are probably greater than the chances of the sun coming up tomorrow morning.

Political Continuity Is Counter Productive

I've thought a lot about this, especially lately. I believe that having the same people in the same public offices year after year is hurting this country. I know that there has been a lot of talk of term limits, but nothing ever seems to happen to change the status quo. I realize that at most levels of government, the people holding the offices are career politicians. I also realize that most people don't like to change careers. How many doctors have you seen give up a medical practice to go to law school? So, we can figure that these folks that are in public office are gonna stay there for life. If that is the case, how can we mitigate the damage they do?

My answer is (1) to have all public office holders run for re-election every other year and (2) make it illegal for any office holder to have the same office more than once. Simple enough, two year terms, no succession. In a perfect world, I would rather see citizen office holders who give up a couple of years of their life to serve on the water board, school board, in congress or as president, but that is not gonna happen. The next best thing is to have all these politicos rotating between jobs every two years. They will do a lot less damage that way and they still will be able to live out their lives swilling at the public trough.

Some Folks Never Seem To Get It Right

I am beginning to think that ole Al Gore is one of them. This Wall Street Journal Article casts some serious doubts on claims he made in his recent movie.

The true meaning of patriotism

This article does a good job of describing what patriotism is and what it is not.

Americans Are Angry

As I read this speech that Representative Ron Paul of Texas made to the Congress on June 29, 2006, I was reminded of something that Harry Browne said. 'The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk".'

Another Reason Why I Like Yard Sales and Flea Markets

This morning I was reading a story in The Collectors Newsletter #435 June 2006 from TAIS.COM . Some one named Robin R. had written about a recent experience she had at a local flea market. In the article she was describing a print set she had found. She said, "there was something about it that kept drawing me to it. You know that feeling you get when you find certain items. Its not even a memory, more of a feeling that somehow takes you back in time. Love that feeling! " When I read those words, I knew exactly what she meant. Its a kind of warm nostalgia that comes to you when you see something from the past. Something that takes you back to a happy time or place.

This week I have been going through some of the papers from the desk at my fathers garage. They date from 1959 to 1985. I saw names of people that I had long ago forgotten and papers about transactions and events that I wasn't previously aware of, but all of it gave me that warm nostalgia just like I so often get at flea markets and yard sales.

The Bright Side Of Global Warming

First let me say that I think the idea of significant man-made global warming is junk science. If you are one of those people that is worried about possible global warming, you should read this article. It should make you feel better.

Word Verification Sux

Suddenly ever time I go to post something to my blog, I have to type some nonsense word like "awlyt" or "wxseptyy" in a box before I can publish. I did not opt to have it this way and I've tried to find a place to opt out, but so far I have been unable to. I realize this is supposed to stop automated posts, but I have to log into my blog so why the need for the added step.

It just reaffirms my feeling that computers and the internet will continue to evolve in complexity until they become totally useless.

Today's Issue of The Coosa Marketplace

Today's issue of The Coosa Marketplace, which is a free paper Published by the Talladega Daily Home, includes an article by The Associated Press entitled "Many cities look to Pelham for way to track down all taxes due." The article states that "Pelham's revenue director has shared his successful method of collecting taxes and fees with 20 cities in Alabama trying to collect payments due. Pelham's expanding tax base has helped the Shelby County city increase its budget from $2.5 million in 1990 to $35.8 million this year"

I've lived in Pelham since 1979 and I can tell you that the quality of service to the citizens has not improved in accordance with the increased tax collections. Oh they have built a Racket Club and a Civic Center and a Golf Course. And now they are building a big new city office building, but the traffic is a nightmare, there is a busted water line on my street almost every week and Alabaster has kicked their ass in attacting a fantastic new shopping center. Meanwhile, I understand that the Mayor is the highest paid in Alabama. Pelham may be collecting a lot more money than they used to but it seems that it only gives them more money to waste.

Its So Dry

Its so dry at my house. I said its so dry at my house. (How dry is it?) Its so dry at my house that the plastic wreath on my front door has started to shed its leaves.

Its been quite some time since I remember it being this dry. In fact, I may not actually remember it, I may just remember the stories that my folks used to tell.

Sometime in the early 50's, 1951 I think, it got really dry in Central Alabama. I remember my folks saying that the branch behind our house dried up. In fact several of the branches and creeks dried up. There was one little spring on some land that my folks owned down near Richville that continued to flow. I've not been down to the branch behind my folks house or to the spring near Richville yet to see if they are still flowing, but I do know that it is really dry up here in Shelby County.

Every Dark Cloud Has A Silver Lining

I guess if you look hard enough, you can find some good in almost anything. It has been extremely dry around here for quite some time. I was standing on my front porch this morning while the dogs ran around in the yard and I realized that it has been weeks since I cut the grass. Kind of like winter, without the cold. I don't care much for cutting grass, but I would enjoy about 24 hours of slow rain.

A New Atomic Bomb?

I just read an article that said that the government is having a competition to design a new atomic bomb. Is this really what our country needs? A competition to design a new atomic bomb? I am now convinced that the lunatics are running the asylum.

Schools Out, Check Your Order Before Leaving The Window

Those of you (all three of you) who routinely check my Blog know that I frequent fast food drive thru windows. You also know that I have had some on going problems with several in this area. The one bright spot in all this has been the local McDonald's but last week they let me down. I drove up to the outside speaker to order but could not get any response. I drove around the building and pulled up to the other speaker and was able to place my order. When I got to the window to pay, a young guy who I had never seen before casually took my money. I pulled to the next window and a young lady who I had never seen before shoved a bag at me and I drove off. Later when I checked the bag, my two double cheeseburgers, two medium fries and two apple pies were actually two cheeseburgers, one big mac and a small fry.

I've thought about this and I think that what is happening is kids are out of school for the summer, maybe even graduated and are looking for summer jobs. Many are probably going to college this fall and see this demeaning work as necessary to get them thru the summer. They don't give a fat rats ass whats in the sack, just get thru 8 and collect that minimum wage check.

While you are at it, be careful where you get your oil changed. When my daughter was in college at Auburn, she took her car to Express Oil Change , had them change the oil and then drove back to her apartment. A hour or so later she went to get back in the car and there was a big puddle of oil on the ground underneath the car. She called Express Oil Change and they sent someone over. Turns out the person who put the oil filter on did not tighten it down sufficently. Apparently he also did not check for leaks when the car was started. I can't prove it, but I have always suspected that the employee in question was some student working part time to help out with finances. Don't get me wrong, I think that is commendable and I am sure that most young workers do a good job, but if they see the work as beneath them and just a way to get some money, quality suffers.

Don't forget, Schools Out, Check Your Order Before Driving Off.

How About A Tax On Doctors Instead?

This article in the Daily Mail says that US doctors want a tax on Coke and Pepsi to fund an anti-obesity campaign that the doctors want to run. I have a novel idea, why don't the doctors pay for the campaign themselves. Of course, when that looser, Hillary Clinton is elected president and gets socialized medicine passed, all those doctors won't be making enough to fund anything. In fact they will be lucky if they can afford a Coke or a Pepsi themselves. Abject poverty often cures obesity.

I did see one thing in this article that I agree with. In this country (USA) we use entirely too much high fructose corn syrup for sweetner. I think surcrose (sugar) is a better, healther sweetner.

My Veggie Car

Charley Reese Does It Again

Again Charley Reese has written an article that says exactly what I feel.

Some Interesting Prescription Drug Information

I came across this article about some of the percentages quoted in drug advertisements. I have known for a long time that people with an adgenda (not just drug companies) use percentages to make things seem more impressive than they are. The information in the article is a good indicator of why any argument that contains percentages should be immediately followed by a question. "What are the raw numbers."

For example, if you buy one Powerball ticket, you have a 1 in 146 million chance of winning. If you buy two Powerball tickets, you have a 1 in 73 million chance of winning. That is a 50% improvement. Does that mean you ought to rush up to Ardmore and buy two Powerball tickets?

Dixie Highway Yard Sale

Saturday, Linda and I took in the Dixie Highway Yard Sale in Georgia. We started at the north end in Ringgold Ga and traveled south to Marietta. This was the first year for the sale but it seemed to be well organized with lots of signs. The Dixie Highway route is well marked with signs and there were a lot of Dixie Highway Yard Sale signs as well. We had a great time and my opinion is that this sale was a success. You can learn more about this sale and the Dixie Highway at http://www.dixiehighway.org/

A Stateless Society

Pretty interesting article by Stefan Molyneux about the possibility of a stateless society.

Veggie Car Update

From time to time I see articles on line or tv spots about conversion of diesels to run on vegetable oil. I also see a good many posts in the various newsgroups and forums I frequent. For the most part the articles and tv spots are just human interest, with a little talk about high fuel prices. The newsgroup posting on the other hand run the range from people looking for information to folks who act like someone in commiting blasphmey just mentioning it. The most recent article I read prompted me to give a status report on my veggie car.

Since I completed the conversion in April 2005, I have put 5328 miles on the veggie car (1979 Mercedes 300D). Most of this has been using waste vegetable oil as fuel. I do use diesel for startup, warmup and shutdown. While 5000 miles is not long enough to judge the long term effects of running WVO, so far, so good.

A British Take On German Humor

I loved this article from the Guardian about the differences in British and German humor. I think you will recognize the "German Boy" joke as being the same as the "Cajun Boy" joke told in the south.

The Golden Rule

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Think about it and then read this article.

People don't say what they mean.

I was listening to a radio talk show the other day and a guy called in and said "I could care less" about some topic of discussion. The host and guest corrected him. What he should say is "I could not care less" to indicate his lack of interest. Saying he could care less indicates that he does have some small concern.

I was out doing the Chattanooga to Knoxville leg of the Hwy 11 Yard Sale this past Saturday. On at least two occasions I came across signs that said "Yard sale inside." What?? Yard Sale Inside? Sale inside maybe, but yard sale inside?

Another place I saw a sign, professional not home made, advertising the "Mothers March for Ovarian Cancer." I don't think so. Mothers March Against Ovarian Cancer or maybe Mothers March for Ovarian Cancer Research, or even Mothers March for Ovarian Cancer Cure. But certainly not Mothers March for Ovarian Cancer.

No wonder there is so much misunderstanding in the world. People don't say what they mean.

Seat Belts Save Lives

I know you have heard it. So have I, but I've often wondered. If seat belts save lives, why don't school buses have them? Well I did some searching and found an article on www.nhtsa.dot.gov that essentially says that school buses are made safe enough that seat belts are not necessary. This begs the question, why don't we all just drive school buses? Or, why aren't cars built as safe as school buses?

US Highway 11 Antique Alley Sale May 2006

Yesterday I shopped the Birmingham – Chattanooga leg of the subject sale. My past experience led me to start at Argo, AL. Not many sales until I reached Whitney Junction (intersection of US 11 and US 231.) It may have been because it was a Thursday or because gasoline prices are high but there were not as many vendors or customers as in years past. Attalla AL, Fort Payne AL, and Trenton GA continue to be the sites of the most concentrated activity.

I would enjoy hearing from anyone who has any experience with any of the other Highway Yard Sales located around the country. Not so much the 127 sale because I am fairly familiar with that one, but would appreciate any suggestions for the others. If you have comments or suggestions about any of the sales, especially those in the southeast, you can add them as a comment to this posting. Or, if you prefer, you can email them to me at pentonville@gmail.com

A Quote From A Fellow Alabamian

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the
children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in
the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or
nothing."

-Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968), deafblind American
author, activist and lecturer, Let Us Have Faith, 1940

Highway Yard Sales

I love highway yard sales. You know the ones that start in one town and stretch along a road or roads for miles and miles. My favorite is the 127 Corridor Sale, originally called the World's Longest Yard Sale. It runs from Gadsden Alabama to Covington Kentucky.

Earlier this week I came across a site entitled Cruising for bargins by Gannett News Service hosted by the Battle Creek Enquirer. It is the most complete listing of highway yard sales I have ever seen. If you love them like I do, you should check out that web page.

Who is next?

I was born in 1947. Harry Truman was still president. I don’t remember his presidency, but I do remember his successor, Eisenhower. I also remember all of the ones that followed, right up to today. Each of them, with the exception of Gerald Ford, was president for at least four years, so I had time to personally evaluate what they were doing. After they left office, additional information has been made available. Enough information that even the casual observer with a little reading and study can size all these presidents up. I have, and this is what I found, each one of them was not as good as his predecessor. That’s right. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower right up to W has been worse than the guy that preceded him.

Some of them talked a better story than the guy they succeeded, but none of them produced. This leads me to an interesting question. Who is next? Who is it in this country that is capable of being elected and will be a worse president than W? Is it possible? Will the trend finally change? Have we bottomed out? Will the next president actually be as good as or even better than W? The optimist in me would like to think so; the pessimist in me doubts it. The realist looks at the mindset of the electorate, the quality of the politicians and the state of the world and figures 2008 will see the trend continue. I don’t know who he or she will be but I suspect once they get settled in, we will be looking back remembering the good ole days when W was president.

Me, Corky, and Dixie

You know what's scary?

Its scary to think that 29 percent of Americans surveyed 'think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good" job as president'. Excellent? Pretty Good? Remember what nearly a third of the people call excellent or pretty good the next time you are reading a used car listing on the Craiglist.

I'm Not Afraid

Luke Skywalker: I won't fail you. I'm not afraid.
Yoda: You will be. You will be.

Something like this may have been what Yoda had in mind.

We Carry

We being the people who live in my state and a majority of the states in the United States. If you have to ask "Carry What?", then you probably need to hyperlink over to some other blog.

This morning I was reading an article by Greg Perry . He was relating that the right to carry is not a second amendment right, but a inalienable right. That reminded me of something that happened a few years ago. Linda and I were attending the wedding of a friends daughter. The wedding was being held in Methodist Church in a college town in central Alabama. We were sitting there in the church and Linda noticed a bulge in my right front pocket. She reached down and touched the bulge, looked at me and said, "are you packing?" I nodded that I was. "In a church?" she asked. Again I nodded that I was. She looked at me kind of quizically. I leaned over and told her not to worry, God didn't mind, he was the one that gave me the right to carry in the first place.

Caffeine - The Wonder Drug

A Japanese study has found that drinking green tea lowers your chances of developing type 2 diabetes. Can it be the caffeine? If so, could the reduction in caffeine in the American diet be contributing to this country's increase in type 2 diabetes?

My favorite dietician has always told me that "all foods fit." I believe it, including those foods with caffeine.

High Gasoline Prices -Who or What is to Blame?

This article does an excellent job of putting what has happened to gasoline prices into perspective. One item of particular note to me is the timing of the replacement of MTBE with ethanol. I kind of thought that the current run up in gas prices in spite of a small drop in crude oil prices was the oil companies taking advantage of the summer driving and vacation season. Turns out its the time table on some new government regulation. I guess I am just as programmed as everyone else to blame big corporations when actually most of our problems are caused by the government.

Titles Are Important

A friend of mine who lives in another neighborhood in Pelham came by for a visit the other day. While we were talking, he told me that Pelham now has an ordinance that makes it a crime to say the name Bobby Hayes without preceding it with the title of mayor. In other words if you say "Bobby Hayes" instead of "Mayor Bobby Hayes", you can get a ticket. He said the fine for a first offense is $100. I'm pretty sure he was kidding..... I think the fine for a first offense is only $25 ;>)

Pepsi One

I've always been a Coca-Cola drinker. Not diet Coke, or Coke with some other additive like lime juice, vanilla or cherry. Nope just straight classic Coke. As I've gotten older my waist line has expanded and I had to start substituting something else for some of my Cokes. Black coffee works well, but sometimes I want something cold and sweet tasting. Last summer I started drinking Crystal Lite lemonade and orangeade. They were both good but both of them contain Aspertame. I'm not an alarmist and not really worried about Aspertame poisoning, but some of my joints that are mildly arthiritic started to ache more than usual. I read that Aspertame can increase arthiritic symptoms so I switched to diet drinks sweetened with Splenda. The best ones that I had found are Diet 7UP and the Diet Rite Tangerine.

Yesterday I was in Wal-mart and noticed that they had Pepsi One. This past weekend I read that Pepsi One is sweetened with Splenda. I got a two liter bottle and tried it. It is really good. I have to admit that it is without a doubt the best diet cola that I have even drank. Of course I am still a Coke drinker and my non diet drink of choice will still be Classic Coke, but Pepsi One has definitely found a place in with the Diet 7Up and Diet Rite in my refrigerator.

Anarcho-Capitalism

Although the author of this article uses the term libertarian to describe what he is talking about; I think what he is describing is actually Anarcho-Capitalism. It is a term that was first introduced to me by an article written by Brad Edmonds and published on http://www.lewrockwell.com.

If you do some searching on Lew's site you probably find more than one article about Anarcho-Capitalism. Also I recently listened to an archive recording of a segment of Karen Kwiatkowski's "American Forum" on [BAD LINK] http://www.rbnlive.com/ the Republic Broadcasting Network where Brad was the guest. He talks about Anarcho-Capitalism in that interview as well.

Its a very interesting concept and seems to hold more immediate hope for living a libertarian lifestyle in todays world. One final note, if you look at the very bottom of the first article I mentioned, you will notice that the author, Per Bylund, is the founder of Anarchism.net. Nuff said.

Troublesome Religious Behaviors

My daddy always told me "don't make fun of someone else's religion, it might be better than yours." I think he said that it was something his daddy had told him. I've tried to make that one of the guiding principles of my life, although I do admit to being pretty hard on Southern Baptists from time to time. I say all that to let you know that I am not criticizing anyone’s religion, per se, but I am criticizing the assumptions, processes and procedures that accompany some of them.

One of the hardest things for me to understand is how anyone can, in the name of their deity, kill someone of another religion, just because they are of another religion. I don’t care what your holy books or holy men tell you, I don’t think taking the life of someone else just because they believe differently from you is justified.

Another thing that really gets up my ass is for someone to assume they know what your religious beliefs are without ever asking you. One of my relatives came by recently to give me “one more opportunity to accept Jesus.” Granted this relative has some brain chemical imbalances that cloud his judgment when he foolishly neglects to take his medication, but I have known others of his sect that were just as obnoxious and did not have the excuse of mental illness. These assholes assume that I’m not saved because I don’t go to church. Not a one of them has ever taken the time to draw me out and find out what my beliefs are. They just set in trying to save me using their standards.

Don’t get me wrong, when I say that the aforementioned types assume without asking, that doesn’t mean that I necessarily want them to be asking. It has been my observation that most of the people that are inquiring about your religious beliefs are just trying to find out how yours are different from theirs. Then they will attempt to show you how yours are wrong and what you need to change. Its really strange to me that people who would never come up to you and ask you if you screwed your wife last night, won’t hesitate a minute about questioning you about whether or not you love Jesus. What are these people thinking? I suppose they think you won’t mind sharing the details of your religious beliefs with them. After all, they are the ones that drop Jesus’ name in every other sentence. I sometimes wonder if they are testifying or if they are just trying to convince themselves that they believe.


Some other folks that I am troubled by are what I like to refer to as the “bible cultist.” They are the ones that come along behind you and provide annotation on everything that is happening and all their sentences begin with “The bible says”. Sometimes it seems to me that these people think that God and Jesus exist just so the bible will have something to talk about. I have got news for them; the holy trinity is made up of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, not the father, the son and the holy bible.

People that are certain that members of their cult are the only ones that are going to make it to heaven also trouble me. It seems to me that the God of the Universe is great enough to find a way to accommodate different faiths. If life is so narrowly scripted that only a handful of souls are gonna make it to heaven, why not just send the whole bunch to hell to begin with and save a lot of time and trouble.

I suspect that all of these people are completely sincere in what they believe. I’m also sure that they will make it to heaven, but like I once told a fellow with whom I worked, "if heaven is gonna be full of all the folks like you, then hell might not be as bad has I had feared."

Room For Optimism

Karen Kwiatkowski writes about her radio program, 'American Forum' on [BAD LINK] http://www.rbnlive.com/programs.html
the Republic Broadcasting Network.

The Price of Oil

Here is an article by Congressman Ron Paul on what we can do about high oil prices.

Victor Cagle was a Performance Artist

When I was growing up, my maternal grandparents had a man that stayed with them named Victor Cagle. Victor was probably 50 years old and had the mental capacity of a 6-year-old. My grandfather was a farmer and there was always farm work going on. The entire family participated, as did Victor. When Victor was working, he was always singing. None of the songs had much melody and the lyrics did not rhyme. Every tune contained the phrase “honey baby" at least once.

When I was a teenager, we would occasionally hear a song on the car radio or TV and my father would comment that it sounded like something written by Victor Cagle. I never thought much about it, but recently I have been listening to some podcasts that involve “performance artists. After hearing a few, I have come to realize that what Victor was doing was performance art. I guess Victor was born 60 years too soon. If he were alive today he would probably have his own podcast.

The Mark of the Beast

Hurray for the New Hampshire House of Representatives. They have voted to prohibit their state from implementing the new drivers license requirements in the Real ID Act. Congress and the President are using peoples fears of terrorists and illegal immigrants as a way to back door in a nation id system. New Hampshire is calling them out on it. As one lady explained in the article, it woould be a identity theft nightmare. I agree with the pastor who said it is just a step on the way to the mark of the beast.

Drugs Are Bad, mmk, But......

Drug Prohibition does not work.

Good For Him

CBS news reports that Congressman Charles Taylor has blocked purchase of land for a flight 93 memorial. His stated reason for blocking the proposal is that the federal government already owns more land in this country than anyone else and does not need to be spending money to buy more land. Congressman Taylor is exactly right. I think that for the federal government to buy any more land, it should be required to sell land of equal or greater value to a private individual, not a corporation, a private individual to raise teh funds for the purchase.

If the people proposing this memorial feel strongly about it, and if the government won't raise the money to purchase the property by selling some of its existing property, then they (the people supporting the memorial) should raise the money for the memorial, purchase the land and create the memorial as a private enterprise.

Regime Change

Looks to me like Iraq is not the only country that needs a regime change.

What If?

Back in the early sixties, President John Kennedy sent this country on a path to reach the moon by the end of the decade. It took a lot of work and money, but we made it. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if W had decided early on in his presidency that by the end of the decade, we were gonna have fusion reactors. You know about fusion, it is the clean nuclear reaction. Like what the sun does. Little or no messy waste. Instead of spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives slogging around in the middle east what if all that money and effort had been spent on developing a practical fusion reactor? Cheap electricity with no nuclear waste, no acid rain, no coal trains. Could we do it? Can we do it? Probably not. The United States is not the same country it was in the early sixties. Too many lawyers, lobbyists and radical "environmentalists." Still it is nice to think about what could have been.

Amen Brother!

This article about the mass murder at Waco says it all.

Sister Woman's Children

I have found sister woman's children. No not my sister, sister woman from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." You remember them, the little no neck monsters. Well I have found them and guess what, they are all policemen. I rode by a police car parked on a residential street this morning with his radar set up to get all the folks driving 40 mph to work in a 35 mph zone. Just as I passed him, I looked to the side to see what he looked like and there he was, one of sister woman's kids. You know what I mean. Instead of a head and neck, he just had this big truncated cone sitting on top of his shoulders.

I was immediately reminded of an accident I had in downtown Birmingham a few years back. I was driving along on 3rd Ave North, a one way going west, and a lady from out of town made a left turn out of the middle lane right into the side of my Datsun. I called the police and about an hour later a police car arrived. The policeman instructed us to drive to a parking lot down by the interstate. It was raining so he did not get out of his car. Instead, he had me and this lady stand in the rain and tell him what happened while he wrote it up. I notice at the time that he had no neck. Also he apparently had a bad case of hemorrhoids or a risen on his ass because he sat cocked one sided in the seat.

Since that time to the present, I have seen a lot of no neck policemen and few no neck police women, but it had never occurred to me until this morning that what I was seeing was sister woman's kids. Next time I see one of them I'm gonna stop and ask them if they have heard from Maggie the Cat lately.

Wanta Oughta Gotta

I have basically lived my life as a lumpen. Sure I graduated from college, but today that only serves to make you one of the more easily employed lumpens. Being a lumpen, I don't spend a lot of time philosophizing about the meaning of life in general or mine in specific. Nope, for the most part I have just lived a life of wanta, oughta, and gotta.

Went I was a child, it was all about wanta. I don't remember back that far but I am sure at some point is was entirely wanta. You pee in your diaper, you want it changed, you cry, someone changes it. Your belly growls, you cry, someone sticks a bottle in your mouth.

A few months pass and you grow to where you can start moving about, exploring, getting into things. Up pops oughta, or more appropriately, ought not. You reach for a cutsie on the end table and you hear, "no no" or "un uh" or "stop." You try to climb a chair and get onto the dining room table and someone pops you on your diapered behind. Oughta kind of permeates your life through the process of elimination. Gradually many of the things that you wanta do get replaced by things you oughta do.

Gotta comes along later. For most of us it comes when we get six and have to start going to school. For me it came a few months earlier. When my sister was a small baby we went down to my Aunt Annie's house for a visit. We had started to leave and were in the front yard when my mom realized that she had left the diaper bag in the house. My father told me to go back in and get it. I was about 5 years old and there were a bunch of scary old relatives sitting on the front porch so I didn’t want to go back by them. (I'm 58 now and some of my relatives would still be scary sitting on the front porch but that is a story for another time.) Anyway I told my father no. He tore a limb off an adjacent apple tree and whipped the dogshit out of me. At that moment I got my first big lesson in gotta. From that day in 1951 until February of 2001, I lived a life dominated by gotta. You gotta go to school, you gotta work in the summer, you gotta go to college, you gotta get a job, you gotta come to work, you gotta take lunch at 11:30, you gotta be back in 1 hour, you gotta go to meetings, you gotta... yada, yada, yada.

When I retired, all that changed. I still have a lot of things that I gotta do and many, many more that I ought to do but now I do get to concentrate more on what I wanta do. If I am lucky, I will be able to make it this way until I die. If my finances collapse, I may have to go back to more gotta and less wanta. I suppose that if I live long enough, I will get back to where I started. When I pee in my Depends, I will want it changed, I will yell and some one will eventually change it and when I get hungry, I’ll complain and some one will stick a spoonful of ground ham in my mouth. God, I hope I die before I get back to all wanta.

Tax Day 2006

According to an article in the Washington Times, the majority of Americans feel that the existing income tax system is unjust. The article goes on to say that some people feel that low-income families are unduly affected. Others complain that too much burden is placed on middle income workers. Still others complain that wealthy people pay a disproportionate amount of the taxes. The question: who is correct. The answer: all of the above. Everybody pays too much tax because the government spends too much money. The solution: Eliminate all income taxes and let the government get by on what it collects by other methods. The chance of that happening: About as good as the survival odds for a snowball in hell.

There are a couple of things that would get us started in the right direction. One is to replace the existing income tax nightmare with a flat tax. Everybody pays the same rate. The other is to eliminate withholding and move the tax filing date to Halloween, just before the November elections. This would cause everyone to see just how much they are paying to the governemt and have it still fresh on their minds when they cast their ballots. I think if those two changes were made, we would see some very positive changes in the way the politicians running this country handle the country's money.

Global Warming again

The linked article contains more interesting information about Global Warming.

GC the wonder drug

There is a lot of interesting and practical information in this article.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Frequently I despair at the direction that I think this country is taking and then I read an article like this and I realize that some good things are happening. Now that Nebraska has passed a Right-To-Carry law, there are only two states, Illinois and Wisconsin, which do not recognize the right of an individual to carry firearms for self-protection. This is important. Not just from the standpoint of citizens being able to protect themselves but also for what it means to us as a free society. Assuming the various state legislatures represent the will of the people, that means that a majority of individuals in 48 of the 50 states recognize that carrying a firearm can be of value in protecting themselves. People who think like that also are most certainly aware that an armed society is a free society. Not all of the criminals are breaking and entering or doing muggings. I have read that during WWII the Japanese who were in charge of planning an invasion of the US said that it even if they managed a military victory it would be an untenable occupation because the citizens of the US had too many firearms. Thank God the majority of our citizens seem to still realize how important that is. Others can have their Homeland Security if they choose, I'll rely on my Home Security AKA Remington 870 12 Ga. pump.

W on Global Warming

Got to give W credit on the Global Warming thing. He seems to have it right. I've said all along that mankind's puny little efforts are nowhere near significant enough to alter climate. After reading this article , I think we had better be more concerned on how we are gonna avoid freezing our asses off and stop worrying about Global Warming.

Bubba, Bubber, and Brother

Bubba jokes are everywhere. Stories about Bubba abound. I often hear comedians, especially northern comedians making light of the name Bubba, but what I never hear is anyone acknowledging where the name Bubba comes from. Maybe everybody already knows this and just thinks it is not worth mentioning. But I don’t think that a lot of them do.

Where I come from, brothers especially older brothers are called Brother. My sister called me Brother. Since she called me Brother, so did my mom and dad. When I worked at my dad’s shop, he called me Brother, so everyone who came by the shop started calling me Brother. That was the only name they had ever heard me called, it was all they knew. One of the most embarrassing aspects of that whole thing was that I knew my wife’s father many years before I knew her. He met me at the shop and, just like everybody else, he called me Brother. Now talking about an awkward situation when your father-in-law calls you Brother. I suspect that would have elicited a lot of lodge pole pine family tree jokes. He quickly replaced Brother with Kenneth when I started dating his daughter and continued to call me Kenneth until his death.

My lady friend Linda calls her brother Ricky, Brother, but she also calls her oldest son Andy, Brother and her younger son John, Brother. Any time Linda starts a sentence off with the name Brother, I have to wait and see what context it is offered up in to determine who she is talking about. I say all this to make the point that Brother is a very common name in my part of the south. Now little babies when they first start to talk don’t pronounce Brother very well. The best of them usually manage something like Bubber. Others are more apt to settle on Bubba. Often the parents will correct them until they learn how to say Brother correctly. This is what my parents did. But many parents think that the mispronunciation is cute. It is a matter of taste. Whatever the case, these names stick. Just as I was Brother to a whole community until I was 24 years old, and just as Ricky, Andy and John are still Brother to Linda, so there are Bubbers and Bubbas through out the south. You don’t have to be a redneck to be called Bubba or Bubber, all you ready need is a younger sibling with average pronunciation skills and laid back parents.

Cussing

My grandmother died when I was eleven. Later on, my grandfather married a woman named Nora. One year for my birthday, Nora gave me a little wooden bank. On its side the bank had the following poem:

“Cussin ain’t the nicest thing
And friends to you it sure don’t bring
But if you really have to say them
Here’s a way you’ll have to pay them.”

The next verse was something about numbers of cuss words and nickels, dimes, quarters, you get the picture. It was a small bank and if I had followed the pay scale it would have filled up everyday before lunch, provided I could have come up with the money. You see I was cussing before I can remember. I grew up in an adult world where most of my male role models were just back from World War II. Most of my friends and classmates had the same kind of environment. We all learned cuss words right in with getting potty trained and learning to tie our shoes. We all cussed.

When I got to the fifth grade, I had a woman for a teacher who should have never been allowed into a school. She openly showed preference to the children who lived inside the town limit versus the ‘country’ kids. She was particularly fond of the kids who went to the Baptist church. She was Baptist. Among the many ‘truths’ that she routinely bestowed upon our little pre-adolescent minds was the fact that “pro-fan-i-ty” was the tool of the ignorant person, the person who knew no better way to express themselves. Now I wasn’t dumb enough to cuss in her presence, but that constant harping about how only stupid people cussed did have its effect on me.

Some how I managed to get through all that indoctrination and remained only slightly warped. I went on to finish elementary school, graduate from high school and complete two year of junior college. Cussing all along the way and knowing deep down that I was stupid and would never amount to anything, but continuing to plug along because I did not know what else to do. Then I got to Auburn. Instant ice water bath. Auburn hit me between the eyes like a mule’s kick. I was immediately in over my head, failing everything I was taking at mid-term. I was just about at my wits end. Seemed like the ole Baptist bitch had hit the nail on the head. But fortunately, I was taking physics. I say fortunately, not because I was doing well in physics, I wasn’t. In fact I was failing it right along with my other courses. No, the beauty of physics was that it was being taught by one of the smartest men I had ever met. In addition to being smart, this man cussed. He ranked right up there with my dad and all those other WWII vets. Gradually I began to realize that my physics teacher was about 10 thousand times smarter than my fifth grade teacher. I figured out that while I was in a world of hurt at Auburn, it did not have anything to do with my cussing. I began to work harder, study more and gradually things started to improve. I even managed to get a C in physics that quarter. Eventually I went on to graduate from Auburn.

Sometimes now I look back and wonder where I would be today if my first physics professor at Auburn had been a minister or deacon. If you have school age children, make a point of knowing what their teachers are saying to them. The things that your children's elementary school teachers tell them will have an effect whether they are true or not. Remember, your kids may not be fortunate enough to have a foul mouth physics teacher when they get to college.

IVOTD4W

I live in Central Alabama. I've lived here all my life. The county where I grew up is mostly democratic, but for the past 30 years I have lived across the river in a republican county. Everywhere you turn are those little black "W The President" bumper stickers. Because this county is so strongly republican I was not too surprised to see a custom license tag the other day with IVOTD4W on it. I suspect that most of my neighbors could truthfully have that very same tag on their vehicle. Considering some of the things that have become known lately, I wonder if those folks are having second thoughts about their tag? Probably not, like I said this is a republican county and one thing I have learned about the republicans and the democrats during my lifetime is they are loyal to their party's candidates. I think it was Huey P. Long that said the only way he could fail to get re-elected was if he was found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. I'm not sure even that would stop the folks around here if the candidate were a republican.

Three Government Workers

This is from today's Joke Of The Day :

A fellow stopped at a rural gas station and, after filling his tank, he bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola and he watched a couple of men working along the roadside.

One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was about 25 feet behind filling in the old.

"Hold it, hold it," the fellow said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this digging?"

"Well, we work for the county government," one of the men said.

"But one of you is digging a hole and the other is filling it up. You're not accomplishing anything. Aren't you wasting the county's money?"

"You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there's three of us, me, Joe and Mike. I dig the hole, Joe sticks in the tree and Mike here puts the dirt back."

"Yea," piped up Mike. "Now just because Joe is sick, that doesn't mean we can't work, does it?"

Most of My Mail is From Credit Card Companies

Or at least it seems that way. Every day my mailbox is full of new credit card offers. Listen up credit card companies, I've already got my quota. And what is the deal with the change of terms letters? Most of the mail that I get that isn't an offer for a new credit card is a letter from an existing credit card provider saying that attached is important information about changes to my user agreement. Warning me to read it carefully and file it away with my important papers. Bullshit. What is attached is a new 7-page user agreement. I am sure that there were some changes made between it and the old agreement but who knows what they are? Who has the time or the old agreement to do the comparison? What difference does it make anyway? Am I gonna take them to court if they have changed something I don't like?

It's not just snail mail either. Yesterday I got an email from the company that issued the MasterCard that I actually use advising me that my MasterCard was being upgraded. I looked that email over pretty carefully and the best I could determine the only change was a different account number. How is that an upgrade?

I had a co-worker one time that canceled his membership in the NRA because they kept sending him unsolicited mail. I've thought about canceling all my credit cards so I won't get those annoying change of user agreement letters. That probably would not help. I suspect that those companies I canceled with would start sending me applications to get one of their cards so the amount of credit card mail would stay the same.

What This Country Needs

Thomas Riley Marshall who was vice president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 said, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." Times have changed since Mr. Marshall’s day. Today I can think of two things this country needs and neither of them is a good five-cent cigar.

First we need massive tax cuts. I don’t mean this hocus pocus carp that they come up with where they estimate expenses will grow by 8 percent next year and they are only going to increase taxes by 7.5 percent so they are giving us a tax cut. No, I mean an honest to God cut. A significant cut. Reduce Income tax, excise tax, gasoline tax, tobacco tax, and any others the feds collect. Cut all of them. Take in a smaller percentage and less dollars. Why you ask? Well, Think of it like this, if you had an alcoholic brother in law that took all the money he could get his hands on and bought whiskey with it, would you have your paycheck directly deposited into his checking account? Giving money to the federal government is just as ridiculous. They do much more harm than they do good and they suck up the nations resources like a dry sponge in a pan of dishwater.

After the tax cutting is done, we need to move on the second thing this country needs, which is a massive cut in government spending. This cut will have to be much more severe than the tax cuts because we are already spending a lot more than we are taking in. The feds need to cut government spending back to a point where the money they collect with their new greatly reduced taxes provides a surplus. In fact I suggest that we pass a constitutional amendment that requires the federal government run an annual budget surplus and that it be required by law that the amount of that surplus get larger every year. That way we will be providing something positive for our children’s and our grandchildren’s future instead of leaving them a bankrupt nation. That will also make congress more effective since they won’t continually have to be voting to raise the debt ceiling.

Without money, most of the questionable government programs will go away. The good people in all those worthless government jobs will change occupations and become useful, productive citizens. All and all, I can’t think of any two things that would help this country more than a big tax cut and a bigger spending cut.

Read The Bills Act

Congress keeps voting on and passing legislation without really knowing what it says. An organization called DownsizeDC.org has provided members of congress with a draft of legislation called the Read The Bills Act. I have read what they propose and it makes sense to me. I have written my congressman and senators and asked them to sponsor and pass this bill. I think it is little enough to ask that they at least read what they are voting on, before they vote on it.

Alabama Legislature Gets Something Right

I used to work with a guy that liked to say that even a blind hog could find an acorn occasionally. I am not a big fan of the Alabama Legislature; most of what they do is useless. However their bill strengthening the right of a citizen to use deadly force when being attacked is a good move. If I were a real optimist, I might think that this is the start of good things to come from the legislature, but I suspect it is just a singular acorn.

Out Of Control

The folks in Washington have lost it. There is no fiscal responsibility left. To say that they are spending money like a drunken sailor would be an insult to drunken sailors everywhere. Spending is definitely out of control.

You Know What Really Pisses Me Off?

Well there are a lot of things, but right now I am only thinking of one, pseudo lawyers. You know; they are the ones that are on every message board, Google group, Yahoo group, and mailing list in the world handling out unsolicited legal advice. All of them have some other primary occupation but when it comes to groups, they constantly offer cautionary legal advice. Like, "if you do that you will be opening yourself up to litigation."

Well listen up pseudo lawyers, I've got news for you. All you are doing is restating the obvious. Ours (USofA) is the most litigious society ever known to man. Anything, and I do mean anything, you do in this country is subject to getting you sued. So stop it already. If there is anyone out there that does not already know that any time you stick your head up above the crowd you are an instant target for a law suit then let them find out on their own. Quit with the redundant cautionary ramblings. It only wastes bandwidth and really pisses me off.

My New Rule Of Thumb

I am a gambler at heart. Not to say that I go to casinos or place sports bets or anything like that. Living, as I do, in central Alabama that would require more effort than I am willing to expend. Even buying a lottery ticket requires a tank of gas and 5 hours driving. No, when I say I am a gambler I mean a risk-taker. But more importantly, I am a risk observer (i.e. a handicapper). Some things like a bet on a roulette wheel have high odds against the player. I know that and I don't do. Other things like buying a lottery ticket are even higher risk, but everytime I go to Georgia or Tennessee I pick one up. I like the day dreaming that goes along with the ever so slight possibility of winning. Things, like betting the sun will come up, are pretty much a sure thing. These “pretty much sure things” enable us all to come up with rules of thumb to simplify our lives. In the case of the sunrise, most everyone observes that and acts accordingly. My sunrise rule of thumb is the same as everyone else’s’, “It’s gonna happen, count on it.” My rule of thumb for roulette is: “It ain’t likely, don’t mess with it.” And my rule for lottery tickets is “it’s damn near impossible but pick one up anyway and day dream until after the drawing.”

Lately I have been working on a new rule of thumb. It involves something that is not as certain as the sunrise but looks to me to be close. My new rule of thumb is: "If the government does it, I am against it." With government understood to mean city, county or parish, state and federal.

Now I know that a lot of you are already thinking, yeah but what about roads, what about police, what about fire protection, what about ______ (fill in the blank with the one thing you think some branch of government does that you can’t live without). Well first let me say that this is a rule of thumb. Not fool proof, just works MOST of the time. Second let me say that I am fairly certain that roads and police and fire protection could be provided with no assistance from the aforementioned governments if we just had the desire and fortitude to try. As for the thing you put in the blank, I leave that to you. Can you figure out a way that it could be done without the government? If not, it is an exception to the rule.

So there it is my new rule of thumb. "If the government does it, I am against it." Its not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate but it seems to work for me the majority of the time.

Give The Devil His Due

Or more correctly, give a CNN reporter credit for a good idea. This article by Karen Kwiatkowski does just that. I liked it the minute I read it.

Write Your Senators and Representative in Congress

If you like everything that your federal government is doing, congratulations. You are indeed fortunate that your elected officials are doing just what you want. On the other hand, if you are like me and see a lot of room for improvement, why not take a moment and let them know how you feel. I found this website which enabled me to send a message to my congressman. It appears that it would work for anyone. So if there is something that you would like changed, drop them a line, or call them or whatever. If you think everything is alright just like it is, I guess you can contact them and tell them that as well and while you are at it, contact me and tell me what meds your doctor is giving you. I might want to get a perscription for myself.

More Gardening

It is kind of overcast today and has sprinkled rain so it seemed to me to be a good time to add to my garden. I had some potatoes in the pantry that were beginning to sprout. I wanted to fix hash browns for breakfast so instead of just peeling the potatoes, I cut off the sections of three that had sprouts. That left me enough potato to have my hash browns but left the little spouts with something to get them going. I planted them in the garden. Next I got down a little plastic bag that had some Indian corn in it. This is some that was off of a dried arrangement that my daughter had. It is a couple of years old so I don't know how it is gonna do, but I put two kernels in each hill. Finally I took some of the little pods of pepper off last years pepper plants and planted them in six little pots. If they do well, I will transplant them into the garden later on. I've already got the wire cages set for my tomatoes but I am going to wait until Good Friday to set them out.

Slippery Slope

I am a firm believer in the slippery slope argument. I said it when the government first started targeting smokers. I don't smoke, never have, except on one or two occasions when I was drinking at a party, but that is a story for another time. But I knew that regulating smokers would lead to unreasonable constraints on the rest of us. Anytime the government starts regulating something, even if it seems at the time to be perfectly reasonable, sooner or later it leads to regulatory abuse. It is just the nature of governments.

Las Uvas de la Ira

Recently I've been listening to some podcasts. I don't have an ipod or other mp3 player so I have been depending on desktop software for playing the podcasts. This past weekend I downloaded a podcast listener called Golden Ear. Its kind of neat, the screen looks like an old Bendix table model radio. The software comes with a list of podcasts. One of the podcasts listed was "Really Learn Spanish." It is done by a guy named Johan van Rooyen who at one time lived in Spain and taught English. I listened to his first podcast this weekend. He gives points on learning spanish that you would not normally find in a formal course. One of his suggestions was to start reading "blockbuster" novels in spanish. His argument seemed convincing to me. I googled 'blockbuster novel' and one of the first hits I got was Grapes of Wrath. Now I have read Grapes of Wrath in english and watched the movie a couple of times so I thought, why not let that be my first spanish book. I found "Las Uvas de la Ira" (Grapes of Wrath, in spanish) on Amazon and ordered a copy. This time next week I should be reading Las Uvas de la Ira.

Time To Re-Think The War On Drugs

Another well written analysis of the counter productive war on drugs.

Uncommon Expressions

My good friend David Coleman, who died a few years back from cancer, hailed from the same part of the state that I do. Even though he grew up just a few miles from Miller’s Garage, I never knew him until after we had both moved to Birmingham. For awhile, David and I worked in adjoining cubicles and when things were slow, we would compare notes about expressions we heard growing up. Expressions that you don’t hear now or at least you don’t hear them in Birmingham.

One of David’s favorites was the use of the word ‘count’ to mean quality. As in 'Now that cornbread is some count'. I’ve also heard people say it 'some account', but you have to listen closely to hear the 'a' sound and most folks just said, 'count'.

Another word that had a special meaning in Coosa was the word 'curious' pronounced cours. As best that David and I could determine, it meant that someone had strange ideas and was highly opinionated. Overbearing was also an adjective that seemed to be linked to 'cours.' The usual usage would be 'he’s a cours old SOB.'

Some expressions defied analysis. One particular one that I remember hearing someone say when they were frustrated with a situation and did not know what to do was, 'I don’t know whether ToShitOrGoBlind.'

When I was very young, I remember hearing old people use the word ‘hope’ instead of the word ‘helped.’ As in ‘He hope me fix my fence.’ Don’t know where that came from, but David agreed that he had heard a lot of older people say it when he was young.

Today, with national TV, radio and the internet, expressions like these are seldom heard, but back when and where David and I grew up they were common place.

The Republicanskis and The Democratskis

Back when Ronald Reagan was president, I was working for a company in downtown Birmingham that had a coop program. For those of you that don’t know about cooping, it is where a student, throughout his or her college career, alternates between classes one term and working for a company the next term. When I was going to Auburn, I thought cooping was a great idea. There were only two objections. My father, who along with my mother was paying for my education, said that it would prevent me from working for him during the summers and he did not think that the cooping would be worth as much money as I could bring in at Miller’s Garage. The other objection was from the Coosa County draft board who said that if I choose to coop, I would have to use their plan, which was one term in Vietnam, followed by another term in Vietnam until my tour of duty was finished. Needless to say I did not enter Auburn’s or the draft board’s coop program.

Anyway, as I said before, the company where I worked in the mid 80’s had a strong coop program. One summer term, we had a female coop from UAB and a male student engineer from Mississippi State. Student engineer was what they called summer temporary employees that happened to be engineering students. This particular student engineer had been in the coop program but his work terms had been completed and he still lacked enough credits to graduate. He was a good worker so some manager recommended that he be hired as a student engineer for the summer. Both of these employees ended up working in the department with me. Prior to that time, I had directed the work activities of our coops and student engineers, but my responsibilities had changed and they were reporting to someone else. For some reason, maybe because of my prior dealing with coops, these two students took a liking to me. We would go on break together and I would offer up my ‘sage’ wisdom. Everything went along pretty well until one day they got on to the subject of the Soviet Union and centralized government. I don’t remember exactly what was going on at the time, but something had whipped these two into a patriotic furor. They were ranting on the wrongs of the evil empire. When they finished, I agreed with them that it was just as bad as they said, but unfortunately, our political situation in this country wasn’t much better. In fact, I said, about the biggest difference I could see was that in the Soviet Union, the communist party picked a few of its members, put them on the ballot, everyone had to vote for them, and they ran the country. In this country, the republicans and the democrats, picked a few of their members, put them on the ballot, everyone had to vote for them, and they ran the country. I added that if the communists were to divide their party into the republicanskis and the democratskis, our systems would be nearly identical.

My observations brought some strong objections from the summer student and the coop. They gave me a pretty good verbal dressing down and left the table almost immediately. If I recall correctly, they never went on break with me again. That was 20 plus year ago. I still think of this when someone starts talking about national politics. I am more convinced now that I was then that what I said was correct. I wonder how those two young people feel about it now?

Easter Cold Snap

My mother's people were farmers. When I was growing up, my family had a garden. People who plant things are much more observant of the weather. One of the things I remember from those years was looking for the Easter Cold Snap. Around this time of year, in late February and early March, it gets spring like in central Alabama, but winter always seems to manage to get one more shot. Since Easter usually falls somewhere in this time frame, that last shot of winter is referred to as the Easter cold snap.

This morning when I got up to let the dogs out, I noticed that my front yard and cars were covered with a light frost. Seems like that last night we had our Easter cold snap.

Hyperinflationary Depression

In this piece, Bill Bonner predicts it, but doesn't do a lot to describe it. A Google search seems to indicate that it is what happened to the German economy between the world wars.

I am certain that anyone over the age of 10 reading this has heard the classic story about the German economy during that time, but for those that have not, here it is:

A man in Berlin went to the bakers to buy a loaf of bread. The quantity of marks required to purchase the bread was so great that he had to carry them in a wheelbarrow. When he got to the bakers, the wheelbarrow was too wide to get through the shop door so he parked it on the sidewalk. He went into the store and bought his bread. When he returned to the sidewalk to get the marks to pay for the bread, someone had dumped the marks on the sidewalk and stolen his wheelbarrow.

The main thing to remember is, with apologies to an old Oldsmobile commercial, "This Ain't Your Daddy's Depression."

Deer Sausage

I have several friends that deer hunt. Occasionally they offer me some venison. I always take it because I like deer meat. Last year one of my friends gave me several packages of ground up venison. I've use it in meatloaf, spaghetti, chili and mixed it half-and-half with ground beef and fried it up in patties for hamburgers. It worked well in all of these but I am an experimenter at heart. In my ramblings, I have acquired a sausage stuffer. The other day I got to thinking that it might be good to stuff some of that deer meat into a casing and smoke it. I did a google search and came up with www.sausagemaker.com. Not only did they have the casings, they had kits that included spices and a how to video. I ordered the sampler pak with seasonings for salami, pepperoni, kielbasa, summer sausage and trial bologna. So far I have only made the salami, but I am impressed. I used mostly venison with a little ground beef and ground pork. I followed the instructions on the tape and voila, I made some salami that I would say is better than what I can buy in the store locally. If you have access to some ground venison and like salami, I suggest you give it a try.

Seedlings Everywhere

The seeds that I planted on March 13 are coming up. This morning I went out and looked at the white oak patch and it is covered in tiny little seedlings. I probably won’t get a lot of stuff out of this patch. Seems most of my gardening results in food for assorted bugs, but the satisfaction of planting those seeds and seeing all those little leaves pop through the soil into the light of day really puts me in a better frame of mind.

A Nation of Screwups?

When I was growing up, I used to notice how older people were very critical of the way things were being done. They seemed to see most change as being a bad thing. I promised myself that I would not be like that when I got 'old'. I have tried to live up to that promise, but as I get older, I realize that while none of us particularly like change, and complaining about it is not productive, it is important to complain about bad changes.

It seems to me that in the past, I remember a time when people took pride in a job well done. Even if it was what some think of as a menial task, it was still important that it be done correctly. I sense that ethic is slowly being replaced with a ‘get by’ mentality. I site the recent screw up with the SAT tests as an example. I realize that mistakes are made, after all we are human. What troubles me is that after the initial mistakes were uncovered, apparently little effort was made to determine if there were any more problems.



Now it comes to light that additional, more extensive errors of omission were involved. I would have liked to think that as soon as the original mistakes were found that the entire process would have been reviewed. Apparently that was not the case. Maybe there was a review and it has taken this long for the facts to come out?

It’s not just the SAT test scoring either. Seems that everywhere I look, someone is screwing up. I am a drive thru person. I know fast food is not good for you, but its what I eat. Locally we have a couple of McDonalds, a Hardees, a Wendy's and a couple of Chicken places. I am heavily into McDonalds, but lately I have been branching out. In particular I have been trying Wendy's as some of their new menu items come highly recommended. Unfortunately, the folks at the local Wendy's seem to lack the capacity or the desire to take and fill a drive thru order. It has gotten so bad that I am tempted to go up to the order speaker and when they say can I take your order, tell them "just throw something in a sack and I will come pay you some money and pick it up, cause that is what you are gonna do anyway."

I know, I know, one less order of fries or a missing Frosty is not gonna stop the world. It surely doesn't match the damage done to those poor kids who had their SAT scores messed up, but to me, it is a local example of what is happening nationwide. We seem to be becoming a nation of screwups. Sure, we can do anything we want we just can't do it right. And when we or someone else discovers the screwup, we fix it, but don't ask ourselves what caused this mistake, are there other associated mistakes?

I guess I have become one of those old people that find fault. Looking back, maybe I just came into the process in the middle, maybe the decline had already started and those previous old people were just taking note of their generation's decline toward mediocrity.

Keystone, AL

When I was growing up, there was a little wide spot on US Highway 31 just north of Alabaster called Keystone. By the time I moved to this area in the late 1970’s, Keystone was gone, Pelham had swallowed it up when Pelham incorporated. North Shelby country has come a long way since then. Lots of improvements, and some changes that were not improvements. The three towns of Helena, Alabaster and Pelham have expanded until now they make up one big ‘geographic’ city, but with three city governments, three fire departments, three police departments, etc, etc. There appears to me to be a lot of inefficiencies in this arrangement. I think it is time to bring back Keystone. Merge the cities of Helena, Alabaster and Pelham into one city named Keystone. There is a vacant former Wal-Mart building right in the middle of where Keystone was located. Make that the city’s main building. Eliminate duplication, and hold new elections to fill the Keystone city government offices. Now to me, that would be a real improvement.

Good News from the Commerce Department

Last week the Commerce Department announced that core consumer price inflation is mild. I would feel a lot better about that if I didn't now that they exclude food and energy from their calculation. Also judging from what I hear about people paying for medical treatment they exclude that as well. So lets see, if you don't eat, drive, heat or cool your home or go to the doctor, you will have plenty of money that will last you for a long, long time. Do I really need the Commerce Department to tell me that?

Cable HiSpeed

I have Charter HiSpeed. My daughter had it installed when she lived here and I have maintained it since she moved. All and all I am fairly satisfied with it. Previously I had used dialup and then satellite. Cable is faster than dialup and not as much trouble as satellite. I do have one little peeve though. I keep seeing Charter's advertisement where they claim to have speeds of 3 Mbps. I even received a card in the mail a few days ago urging me to abandon dialup and step up to Charter's 3Mbps service. The problem is that their actual speed is no where near 3 Mbps. I just checked it a few minutes ago and the upload speed was 117 kbps, download was 371 kbps. Now don't get me wrong, 117/371 are quite respectable speeds but it seems to me that if you advertise 3 Mbps you should at least come close to that, say 2.5 or greater.

SunRocket

During the first week of this month I ordered phone service from SunRocket. They got the Gizmo, which is like a small router or switch and the phones right out to me. I had no trouble hooking everything up and have been using it now of a couple of weeks. So far so good. The quality of the connections seems to be excellent. I have had a few dropouts but nothing I can't live with. The best part is the price. $199 for 1 year unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

Check them out at www.sunrocket.com.

Proverbs 26:11

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Quotes by Einstein.

This page contains an excellent compilation of quotes by Einstein.

Some of my favorites are:

"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age."
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
"Only a life lived for others is a life worth while ."

I have heard some people attribute the definition of insanity,
" Insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results."
to Einstein but I am fairly certain he did not originate that saying.

I Made One 'A' At Auburn

Yes, in the two and a half years that I spent at Auburn, I managed to make an ‘A’ in one course.

It started eight years earlier, in 1959. That was the year I went to work at Miller’s Garage. It was the summer I turned twelve. Miller’s Garage was one of those country shops where you were just as likely to be working on a farm tractor or a pulpwood truck as to be repairing an automobile. Trailers, motor graders and one river ferry were also included in the list of things that we repaired, or ‘patched up’ as my dad would say. There was only one type of machine that was prohibited and that was the chain saw, but that is a story for another time. Often the repair involved welding, especially if the subject of the repair was a farm tractor or pulpwood truck. Since there was a good bit of welding to be done, the shop was well equipped with welding apparatus. It had an oxygen/acetylene set up for cutting, brazing and welding. A Lincoln ‘buzz box’ for electric welding and a Hobart DC welder mounted in an old bread truck for mobile work.

At first I just observed what the other mechanics did with the welders, but I was itching to try my hand. About this same time, my grandfather was building a farm pond on his property. One of the mechanics told me that you could make an ‘excellent’ boat out of two 1948 Chevrolet hoods welded together. Miller’s Garage kept a considerable number of donor vehicles parked on a lot near the shop. Just so happened that there were two fairly decent 1948 Chevrolet hoods available. After some discussion, it was decided that I could learn to weld and make a boat at the same time. A suitable piece of sheet metal was located to fill in the Vee where the hoods came together and I started welding. Very soon into the project, my father began to have reservations. Not about the boat itself but about the amount of oxygen, acetylene and steel rods the project was consuming. There wasn’t much he could do about the gases, but he did substitute wire coat hangers for the mild steel rods. I couldn’t tell much difference. Finally after several days work, the boat was finished. We put about a quart of tar on the seams and took it to the pond. It held together and worked pretty well. I was now a welder, at least by Miller’s Garage standards.

Somewhere along the way I graduated to electric welding. I was allowed to apply hard surfacing to plows and other wear surfaces and once I even fabricated a trailer hitch for a local painters pickup truck. My welding had a style of its own. My dad characterized it as being “like a bull’s ass sewed up with a grape vine, it ain’t much on looks, but it is hell for stout.”

I continued working at Miller’s Garage during the summers, Christmas holidays and AEA. By the time I reached Auburn in the fall of 1967, I had done my share of rough welding. That first year at Auburn, one of the courses that I had to take was called Welding Lab. It was taught over in one of the old shop buildings and while it was called a ‘lab’ it was actually a course of its own. A graduate assistant taught the course. A pleasant guy whose name I do not recall. There was very little lecture. This was a hands on class. The first day, he took us out to the welding shop to show us what we would be doing. As a group, we followed him from one station to the next. He would set up a project (spot welding, brazing, etc.) and do one as an example. Then he would call on some student to try their hand at it. Of course he made it look easy and the student, not yet knowing what they were doing made a mess of things. Finally we came to the electric welding station. He took a couple of pieces of flat steel and told us we were going to attach them with a lap weld. Then he started to demonstrate, but someone had been using the electric welder and changed the settings and when he struck an arc, there was very little welding and a whole lot of sputtering and popping. It took him a few adjustments and false starts but eventually he got the machine set just right and made his weld. Then he turned to me, as I was one of the students standing nearby that had not had a turn at a project and handed me the gloves and the rod holder. You want me to weld, I asked? He said yeah, just run a bead on this flat piece of steel. Well I put on the helmet, hollered “eyeballs” so that everyone would cover their eyes, and proceeded to lay as pretty a two inch flat weld bead as anyone could ask for. When I finished, the lab instructor looked at the weld, looked at me, looked back at the weld and said. That is good, that is very good, in fact that is better than most of you will be able to do after you have finished this course. There were still projects to do and tests to take, but that day, I had made my ‘A’ at Auburn.

The Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac

One of my favorites.

IF

IF the congress passes a bill to amend the constitution so that W can run for a third term and
IF the states ratify that amendment and
IF W runs again and
IF is only opponent is Mike Tyson,
I'll vote for Mike Tyson and
IF his only opponent is Paris Hilton
I'll vote for Paris Hilton and
IF Hitler did excape the bunker intact and
IF he is living in South America and
IF he comes out of hiding for the election and
IF W's only opponent is Hitler
I'll abstain from voting.

Back to Gardening

For the last couple of years, I have not done any gardening. Year before last I did have a few tomato plants, last year nothing.

This past fall I planted a couple of patches of turnips. Last week I tilled up one of the turnip patches. The other I am gonna let go to seed, just to see what happens. I also tilled a small patch adjacent to where the white oak tree fell back in 2001.

Today I planted lettuce, spinach, radishes and onions. The lettuce and spinach are in the "white oak patch" along with some turnips I planted last week. The other items are in the "satellite dish patch". Later on I am gonna plant some tomato plants and pepper plants in that patch. Granted these little patches won't cure world hunger but they should make a nice addition to my menus.

One of these days, I am gonna plant some potatoes again like I did before I retired. Potatoes are a fun crop to grow and harvest.

A New US Capitol

Where I grew up, the county seat, the site of the county government, was located in a town near the geographic center of the county. Seemed like a good plan to me at the time. It still does. Now I realize that when the District of Columbia was hacked out of Maryland and Virginia to serve as the site for our nations capitol, it was pretty much centrally located. A lot has changed since then and I think that it is time for the capitol to be relocated. In years past, I’ve made a couple of trips across this country and recently I’ve been doing some map pondering and I have decided that the new capitol needs to be located near Hoxie, Kansas. Not in the town mind you, but near it. I think that the US seat of government should be moved to a parcel of land located in a cornfield just off US Highway 24, near Hoxie. What with terrorist and all, I think that the capitol should be small so it can be easily defended, say about 100 sq. feet. It should be surrounded with a 20-ft thick, 10-ft tall concrete wall with 3 feet of razor ribbon along the top. The wall needs one 6-foot walk gate that will be locked 24/7 365 and guarded by at least a dozen employees of Homeland Security armed with automatic weapons. A new DNA sample and retina scan should be required each time a government official enters the capitol.

Now since the workings of the US Government are the business of the people, the entire area should be under floodlights all the time. No less than 4 cameras should be trained on the complex and sending continuous real time pictures to 4 new 24 hour a day cable channels, C-Span 3, 4, 5 and 6. One other thing, since this will be the US capitol, I think we should make it the law that ALL business of the various branches of the government must be conducted in this new capitol and that the president, congress, supreme court, et. al. must be in the capital when they do their job. The rest of the country can be turned loose to do pretty much like we please. After all, even if the terrorists get into the country, they will be picked up long before they reach Hoxie. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I believe it is a good start toward curing many of our national problems.

A Rose by Any Other Name

Shakespeare had Juliet say “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Important point there, things are what they are regardless of what we call them. Living in these UberPC times, that is a fact that can be easily forgotten. If we call a garbage man a sanitation engineer, he still picks up garbage, although in my neighborhood he is actually a truck driver and lift operator. No one actually touches my garbage can now but me. I bring up this subject of name versus reality because I see it as the starting point of what I perceive to be a bigger problem. At first we started calling things by different names as if that made them better or different. I believe this lead us to taking a valid concept of self improvement, the talking about things we intend to do as if they had already been done, and bastardizing it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that positive affirmation in an effective self-improvement tool. I personally think it has worked for me in the past. But, it is only a tool. No hammer ever built a house unless some carpenter swung it. No ratchet ever tightened a bolt unless some mechanic turned it. A tool helps us accomplish a task. Somewhere along the way, that fact seems to have been lost. Now, many people apparently seem to think that all you have to do is say something to make it so. I suppose in their mind that works. I have heard that if you tell a lie long enough you begin to believe it. My point is that if you are a member of a football team that does not practice well, does not play well and does not win any games, it is silly to stand on the sideline and yell we are number one. It is even sillier to actually believe that you ARE number one. Saying it doesn’t make it so, working hard to accomplish it makes it so.

Another fact that we seem to have lost sight of is that doing it one time only makes it so that one time. Just because you were on top in the past, does not make you a winner today. Today as a nation, we spend a lot of time basking in the glory of our past deeds. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear someone bragging about how great we are. I think that the time for basking and bragging is over. We need to quit talking about how great we are and take a long hard look at what we have become. A popular challenge for someone who is resting on their laurels is “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” I think it is appropriate for us to ask ourselves the similar question, “what have we done lately?”